Congress is scrambling to save the anti-American PATRIOT Act by pretending that a "reform" re-authorization bill, the FREEDOM Act, will protect our liberties. Former Rep. Ron Paul legislative director Norm Singleton joins the Liberty Report for an inside look at Washington maneuverings.
Congress is scrambling to save the anti-American PATRIOT Act by pretending that a "reform" re-authorization bill, the FREEDOM Act, will protect our liberties. Former Rep. Ron Paul legislative director Norm Singleton joins the Liberty Report for an inside look at Washington maneuverings.
Congress is scrambling to save the anti-American PATRIOT Act by pretending that a "reform" re-authorization bill, the FREEDOM Act, will protect our liberties. Former Rep. Ron Paul legislative director Norm Singleton joins the Liberty Report for an inside look at Washington maneuverings.
Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
I'm delighted today to have two special guests.
Of course, Daniel McAdams has been with me a good bit with this report.
He's with me again today, and he, of course, is the executive director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
But today, Daniel, we also have another special guest that we've known for a long time.
Matter of fact, I've known this guest longer than I've known you because he came.
And if anybody's annoyed by me having been in Congress, they should be annoyed with him because he helped actually came to Texas to help me beat the establishment when they didn't want me to go back to Congress in 1996.
That is Norm Singleton.
Norm, great to have you with us today.
Thank you, Dr. Paul.
Great to be here.
Okay, Norm was the legislative director when you came to our office in the historic year 2001, and you worked very closely with him.
You understand his humor and you understand his ability, and you know his filing system very well.
But, Norm, it is good.
I have relied on you for so long for so much information, and I still do because you're doing very similar work to keep everybody at Campaign for Liberty alert to everything that's going on on the Hill and trying desperately to stop some of these bad pieces of legislation.
And of course, you did a lot of work on the banking committee as well and on audit the Fed.
But today, what we want to talk about is a bill that the Campaign for Liberty is working on.
There was a major vote yesterday in the House Judiciary Committee, and that's the USA Freedom Act.
And this is the bill that is going to give us all this wonderful stuff.
It's going to reform the Patriot Act.
And the American people are tired of the Patriot Act and all the spying.
And Edward Snowden has done a great job telling the people how bad that is.
But yesterday, there was a vote in the Judiciary Committee.
And so, Norm, very briefly start off by telling us a little bit about what the bill is, the U.S. Freedom Act, is all about and just why.
That sounds like a great bill.
Sounds like if you and Daniel got together, you'd say, Hey, Ron, this is a Freedom Act.
And the Patriot Act was so great, so the Freedom Act must be pretty good too, especially since it's supposed to, you know, make things a little bit better for the American people.
But let us know what the update is and what this vote was yesterday.
Well, of course, to start with, anytime a bill has a name like the USA Freedom Act, you need to read it very carefully because the title tips you off.
It's going to be bad.
If it's called the Patriot Act, I'm really excited.
If it's called the Affordable Care Health Care Act, your health care is not going to be more affordable.
And if it's called the USA Freedom Act, we're not going to have more freedom in the USA after it passes.
And what this bill is, it's a basically two parts.
One is, which is, of course, the main concern of the administration, the security state, and their defenders and apologists in Congress, is an extension of the parts of the Patriot Act that sunset at the end of this month, June 1st, that are some of the worst in terms of authorizing the security agencies to collect our phone calls, our mega, what's called megadata,
and to lean on every American, really the heart of what the Snowden revelations were all about.
Then, because of the Snowden revelations and because of the groundwork that has been laid by the work that you, Dr. Paul, Daniel, myself, and our allies, both in Congress and more importantly, throughout the nation, have done on this issue since 2001.
There's such a great public demand now for an end, or at least a modification. of these programs, some kind of restraint.
There is a little tiny bit of reform put in to make it a little bit more difficult for them to collect the data.
But if you look at the details, it really is such small reform that it practically amounts to nothing.
This is not going to stop a creative.
And as we saw, one of the things we saw with the Snowden revelations, they're very creative in looking at the law and figuring out how to get around it, how to find a loophole, how to exploit those loopholes.
So this bill will not do anything.
What it does do is it makes the House leadership able to issue press releases saying, we reformed the Patriot Act, but we're keeping you safe from terrorism while protecting your rights.
But they've been saying that basic passed in 2001.
And then a few years after that, we get a revelation that the NSA is exceeding its limitations.
They're collecting all sorts of data.
And then Congress, some congressmen thumped their chest about how they're for reform, but we can't get rid of everything.
And we're back to back to square one again.
Yeah.
In a way, they're pretending to do some good, but aren't they really doing the same thing with a very thin line of trying to protect us?
The phone companies still have to keep all the records, and the government has access to these records.
So and are we going to, are they, and I think they're allowed to see if this is correct, that they can get these records at least for 72 hours and a chance to get a search warrant for them?
Right.
So they said that President Obama, shortly after Snowden revealed the extent of the spine and the record collection, said he doesn't want the government to collect these records.
He wants the phone company to store the records for the government.
I don't really see the difference, especially since if you look at the history of it, there aren't many, and I'm forgetting his name, sorry about that.
There aren't many heroes in the telecommunications and internet world who are willing to stand up for their customers.
I think Daniel has a question or a point.
Yeah, it's more of an observation, I guess.
It's interesting how the propaganda plays out in this norm because on one hand, you have the status quo, and then you have the extreme on the other side, which is we want to maintain the Patriot Act just like it's always been.
And so the media sells the Freedom Act as a wonderful compromise, moving us in the right direction.
When, as you pointed out, if there is any reform, it's very, very small.
And in fact, I think you might argue, Dr. Paul, but putting this in the hands of the telephone companies to do the government's dirty work for them may even be worse than before.
Oh, I think that's a very good point because that, again, puts big business and big government together.
Big business becomes an arm of the government.
We see too much of that already.
And it's a shame that big business so often goes along with this.
So yes, I would be fearful.
So far, Norm, what you're telling me and what I know about this, I think I lean toward no on this bill.
But what is next up now?
They passed it out of committee.
Understand it will come up soon in the next couple weeks, maybe on the House floor?
Well, they're going to, they're probably, they're out next week, so it probably will be either the week after next or the third week of May.
And of course, this is another trick they like to pull is because the authority for a lot of this fine expires on May 31st, you know, they like to bump up against the deadlines.
We see this with all the budget stuff where they wait till the end of the fiscal year before they bring their appropriations bill, bring their omnibus on December 23rd to threaten people with you're going to have to be here over Christmas if you don't vote for it.
And with another deadline, I wouldn't be surprised if they're here on late May 30th passing this bill, and that makes it easy for the House leadership to scare people into voting their way.
Yeah, and, you know, they claim this is a very, very important deadline.
But the worst thing that could happen if they didn't do it by June 1st is we would have more liberty on July 2nd.
You know, and this sounds like we're going to have no security.
Well, for some reason, what happened after 9-11, the American people didn't commit the crimes, and yet they got all the penalties and lost all their liberties.
And the process of our dangers still exists.
Of course, both the Senate has to pass something and the president has to sign something.
I think the president leans towards saying he supports the USA Freedom Act the way it stands.
But what's going on in the Senate, this Senate leader over there, Republican leader, whose side is he on?
Is he on the side of the American people or he's talking about introducing another bill?
Or I think he may already have.
He has a bill that he filed and put on the Senate calendar.
They haven't scheduled a vote on it yet, but it's basically just a straight reauthorization of the Patriot Act provisions that sunset.
And from everything that I've read, seen, and been told by other people in the Senate is that this is either a ceiling for Patriot Act reform, which means, or I mean, I'm sorry, a floor for reform, which means that it has to keep the existing structures in place and just tinker around the edges as the USA Freedom Act.
Don't repeal anything that's currently in there.
It's also been referred to as a conversation starter, which basically means he's staking out his position at the farthest extreme in order to try to clearly water down what comes out of the House even more when the House and Senate go to conference or when there's another bill out there in the Senate.
And the idea is, again, it's a scare tactic to try to get some people who might be inclined to push for more than what the USA Freedom Act is given, might be inclined to walk away from the table if they don't get real reform to say, oh my God, we need to pass the USA Freedom Act and we need to pass it right now because Rich McConnell is going to ram through a straight extension of the Patriot Act.
I mean, that's another problem with the USA Freedom Act, though, is it does extend these provisions, I believe, for four years.
So it takes this, you know, Dr. Paul and Daniel, how Congress works.
If there's not a reason to change a law, it doesn't, the law is not going to get changed.
So unless we have another Snowden in the next four or five years, the odds that Congress will voluntarily take up something better than USA Freedom is pretty slim.
Yeah.
You know, Norm, as disheartening as it is to see this propagandizing that we've got to do this Freedom Act, you know, looking for the silver lining, I think it's encouraging that the only reason we're even talking about even minor reform is because of citizen pressure.
And Snowden certainly helped, but citizens' awareness, what you all do over there, and what we all do to try to get people motivated.
So I think really, I'm sure both of you will agree with me that the biggest message now is for people, don't compromise.
You've got them on the ropes, maybe, and it's not time to take any half measures.
Keep pushing for real liberty and real freedom.
You know, I think that's a very important point.
And I think we're going to sort of close with this point because Norm works with the Campaign for Liberty, and they're involved with legislation.
And you know that we ourselves get very frustrated with the political system.
I've been in it and I'm still very frustrated with it.
Some of our people think it's not worth it.
But the work the Campaign for Liberty did and what you guys did when we were in office, we had an effect on the Federal Reserve.
You know, no, we didn't get rid of the Fed and we didn't get the Fed audited, partially so, but a lot more people know about it.
That is why this work is important to continue with it.
And people who say, no, it's not worth the effort, well, go into education or something.
But I think this political action is important.
And that's why I wanted to make sure everybody knew that Campaign for Liberty was busy on this subject.
And it does make a difference.
Prevailing attitudes is really the ultimate test of how a contributor goes.
If the country supports welfare and warfare, the government is going to do it.
And it's when the people reject Keynesian economics, reject this interventionism in foreign policy, and honors and respects the Fourth Amendment and our Bill of Rights, that's when the government will change.
So I think this is all very important.
So Norm, do you have a quick suggestion for our listeners on what they might do if they are inclined to try to spread this message?
I would say call your representative and senator, tell them to oppose the USA Freedom Act, tell them to oppose Mitch McConnell's bill.
There is a bill, I think it's 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act sponsored by the lead Republican is Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky that repeals the Patriot Act and the Five Amendments Act and puts in place real protections of our security.
That's the bill that they need to be concerned about.
They need to have moving.
And also, you know, educate your friends.
I mean, for political activists out there, they need to be doing education too because politicians, people like to say, well, if one person calls, they'll ignore me.
That's probably true.
But if 50 people call or 100 people call, they will pay attention.
And the way you get 100 people to call is you explain this to your friends today.
You write letters to the editors.
You go to town, you go to meetings, you pass out literature, and you make them understand that this is going to affect you.
Educate and Mobilize00:00:30
And what the guy you sent to Washington to do, if he doesn't know that you're watching them, watching him or her, and he's going to, he's what that lobbyist is, or Mitch McConnell and John Bayner are guess who they're going to listen to.
Yeah, right.
Well, anyway, Norm, thank you very much for being with us today.
It's good to see you and urge all our listeners to go to the Campaign for Liberty website.
And I would like to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.